Abstract

I am sure you like your teacher, and are quite the teacher's pet! But how do other students in your school feel about their teacher? Will younger students like their teacher more than older students? What other trends can you investigate?

Objective

In this experiment you will find out if more students like their teacher in younger grades than in older grades.

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Introduction

Most students like their teachers. However, they may not always say so. Peer pressure may keep a student from expressing how they really feel. How do the attitudes of students towards teachers vary in your school? There are some stereotypical attitudes you can test in this experiment. Will younger students tend to like their teachers more than older students? Will girls tend to like their teachers more than boys? Is there a particular grade level where students like their teachers the most?

In this experiment, you will be asking other students from your school if they like their teacher. But in order to get meaningful results and to look for trends that can test the questions above, you will need to collect more information than that. To collect the information you will make a survey. Your survey should include your main question, "Do you like your teacher?" and any other information you would like to gather for your study. Some examples of other questions to ask are:

gender (male or female)

age (date of birth)

grade level (K, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th...12th)

school (if you can take your survey to another school)

Your survey should be clear and easy to read. Remember that if you want to include young students who are in Kindergarten, they may be just learning to read! For very young students who cannot read, you may need to give the survey by reading it to each student and writing down the answers for them. You will also need to get permission from other teachers at your school if you intend on giving the survey during class time.

Terms and Concepts

To do this type of experiment you should know what the following terms mean. Have an adult help you search the internet, or take you to your local library to find out more!

survey

attitude

stereotypes

trend

Questions

Will younger students like their teacher more than older students?

Will girls like their teacher more than boys?

How can surveys be used to collect information for a scientific study?

Bibliography

On this Scholastic website, you can browse through sample surveys to see what kinds of questions they ask and how kids answer them:
Scholastic. (n.d.). Kids USA Survey. Retrieved August 15, 2014, from http://teacher.scholastic.com/kidusasu/

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Materials and Equipment

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Experimental Procedure

The first step is to design your survey form. It should be easy to read and understand. Here is an example of a survey for this type of study:

Please answer each question by circling your answer:

Grade Level

K 1 2 3 4 5

Are you a boy or a girl?

boy girl

Do you like your teacher? Answer:

yes sometimes no

How old are you? (write in answer)

I am ______ years old.

Make several copies of your survey to pass out to subjects. For your study to yield data that is reliable, you will need to survey many people from each study group. You should survey at least 50 students from each age group (if you are testing the effect of age) or gender (if you are testing the effect of gender) for your study.

Schedule a time with a teacher to bring your survey to the class for students to take. Or give the survey before school, during lunch time, or after school. Provide participants with a pencil and clipboard to make the survey easy to fill out.

Collect the surveys and keep them in a folder until you have enough participants for each study group.

Make a data table for your results to tabulate the data one variable at a time. Here is a sample table for the grade level variable:

Do you like your teacher? Answer:

Yes

Sometimes

No

Kindergarten

1st

2nd

3rd

4th

5th

Now make a bar graph of your results to analyze your data. Which groups like their teacher the most?

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Variations

As children grow, their attitudes towards their parents also change. You can conduct a study on the attitudes of students towards their parents. Will you see similar trends?

You can conduct this type of study with any kind of preference you can think of. Will young students or older students prefer the same kind of music? Will boys or girls like the food in the school cafeteria the most? You can ask about TV shows, books, sports, food, almost anything!

Ask an Expert

The Ask an Expert Forum is intended to be a place where students can go to find answers to science questions that they have been unable to find using other resources. If you have specific questions about your science fair project or science fair, our team of volunteer scientists can help. Our Experts won't do the work for you, but they will make suggestions, offer guidance, and help you troubleshoot.

Related Links

If you like this project, you might enjoy exploring these related careers:

Sociologist

Any time there is more than one person in a room, there is potential for a social interaction to occur or for a group to form. Sociologists study these interactions—how and why groups and societies form, and how outside events like health issues, technology, and crime affect both the societies and the individuals. If you already like to think about how people interact as individuals and in groups, then you're thinking like a sociologist!
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Psychologist

Why people take certain actions can often feel like a mystery. Psychologists help solve these mysteries by investigating the physical, cognitive, emotional, or social aspects of human behavior and the human mind. Some psychologists also apply these findings in order to design better products or to help people change their behaviors.
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Statistician

Statisticians use the power of math and probability theory to answer questions that affect the lives of millions of people. They tell educators which teaching method works best, tell policy-makers what levels of pesticides are acceptable in fresh fruit, tell doctors which treatment works best, and tell builders which type of paint is the most durable. They are employed in virtually every type of industry imaginable, from engineering, manufacturing, and medicine to animal science, food production, transportation, and education. Everybody needs a statistician!
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